The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century

by Penzler, Otto

  “After delivering its second blow the ram had not again retired. The fever of battle burned hot in its heart; its brain was intoxicated with the wine of strife. Like a pugilist who in his rage forgets his skill and fights ineffectively at half-arm’s length, the angry beast endeavored to reach its fleeting foe by awkward vertical leaps as he passed overhead, sometimes, indeed, succeeding in striking him feebly, but more frequently overthrown by its own misguided eagerness. But as the impetus was exhausted and the man’s circles narrowed in scope and diminished in speed, bringing him nearer to the ground, these tactics produced better results, eliciting a superior quality of screams, which I greatly enjoyed.

  “Suddenly, as if the bugles had sung truce, the ram suspended hostilities and walked away, thoughtfully wrinkling and smoothing its great aquiline nose, and occasionally cropping a bunch of grass and slowly munching it. It seemed to have tired of war’s alarms and resolved to beat the sword into a plowshare and cultivate the arts of peace. Steadily it held its course away from the field of fame until it had gained a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile. There it stopped and stood with its rear to the foe, chewing its cud and apparently half asleep. I observed, however, an occasional slight turn of its head, as if its apathy were more affected than real.

  “Meantime Uncle William’s shrieks had abated with his motion, and nothing was heard from him but long, low moans, and at long intervals my name, uttered in pleading tones exceedingly grateful to my ear. Evidently the man had not the faintest notion of what was being done to him, and was inexpressibly terrified. When Death comes cloaked in mystery he is terrible indeed. Little by little my uncle’s oscillations diminished, and finally he hung motionless. I went to him and was about to give him the coup de grâce, when I heard and felt a succession of smart shocks which shook the ground like a series of light earthquakes, and turning in the direction of the ram, saw a long cloud of dust approaching me with inconceivable rapidity and alarming effect! At a distance of some thirty yards away it stopped short, and from the near end of it rose into the air what I at first thought a great white bird. Its ascent was so smooth and easy and regular that I could not realize its extraordinary celerity, and was lost in admiration of its grace. To this day the impression remains that it was a slow, deliberate movement, the ram—for it was that animal—being upborne by some power other than its own impetus, and supported through the successive stages of its flight with infinite tenderness and care. My eyes followed its progress through the air with unspeakable pleasure, all the greater by contrast with my former terror of its approach by land. Onward and upward the noble animal sailed, its head bent down almost between its knees, its fore-feet thrown back, its hinder legs trailing to rear like the legs of a soaring heron.

  “At a height of forty or fifty feet, as fond recollection presents it to view, it attained its zenith and appeared to remain an instant stationary; then, tilting suddenly forward without altering the relative position of its parts, it shot downward on a steeper and steeper course with augmenting velocity, passed immediately above me with a noise like the rush of a cannon shot and struck my poor uncle almost squarely on the top of the head! So frightful was the impact that not only the man’s neck was broken, but the rope too; and the body of the deceased, forced against the earth, was crushed to pulp beneath the awful front of that meteoric sheep! The concussion stopped all the clocks between Lone Hand and Dutch Dan’s, and Professor Davidson, a distinguished authority in matters seismic, who happened to be in the vicinity, promptly explained that the vibrations were from north to southwest.

  “Altogether, I cannot help thinking that in point of artistic atrocity my murder of Uncle William has seldom been excelled.”

  1889

  CHARLES W. CHESNUTT

  The Sheriff’s Children

  It was uncommon in nineteenth-century America for Negro writers to write and publish fiction successfully, but CHARLES W(ADDELL) CHESNUTT (1858–1932) overcame numerous obstacles to achieve his goal, producing stories that are still highly readable today. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of “free persons of color” who had moved north from Fayetteville, North Carolina. The family returned to Fayetteville after the Civil War, but Chesnutt and his new wife moved to New York City in 1878 in order for him to pursue a literary career; after six months, he moved back to Cleveland, where he passed the bar exam and established a successful legal stenography business.

  He soon became a professional writer, his first short story, “The Goophered Grapevine,” being published by The Atlantic Monthly in 1887, and he became a prolific producer of short fiction for numerous magazines and newspapers. His first published book was an important story collection, The Conjure Woman (1899), told in dialect in the vein of folktales by Uncle Julius, a freed slave, who entertained a white couple from the North with farfetched fantasies of ghosts, supernatural occurrences, and, of course, conjuring. It was quickly followed by The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899). The same year saw the publication of a biography, Frederick Douglass, as well as the novel The Passing of Grandison. In 1900, the novel The House Behind the Cedars saw print, and The Marrow of Tradition came out the next year.

  Poor sales of Chesnutt’s books, in spite of the critical acclaim he received, eventually forced him to turn away from a literary life. The new, modern writers of the Harlem Renaissance regarded him as old-fashioned and his fiction as often illustrative of racial stereotypes, so he changed careers and in 1901 became a social and political activist, serving on the General Committee of the NAACP.

  “The Sheriff’s Children” was first published in the November 7, 1889, issue of the New York Independent; it was collected in The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899).

  ***

  A MURDER WAS A rare event in Branson County. Every well-informed citizen could tell the number of homicides committed in the county for fifty years back, and whether the slayer, in any given instance, had escaped either by flight or acquittal, or had suffered the penalty of the law. So, when it became known in Troy early one Friday morning in summer, about ten years after the war, that old Captain Walker, who had served in Mexico under Scott, and had left an arm on the field of Gettysburg, had been foully murdered during the night, there was intense excitement in the village. Business was practically suspended, and the citizens gathered in little groups to discuss the murder, and speculate upon the identity of the murderer. It transpired from testimony at the coroner’s inquest, held during the morning, that a strange mulatto had been seen going in the direction of Captain Walker’s house the night before, and had been met going away from Troy early Friday morning, by a farmer on his way to town. Other circumstances seemed to connect the stranger with the crime. The sheriff organized a posse to search for him, and early in the evening, when most of the citizens of Troy were at supper, the suspected man was brought in and lodged in the county jail.

  By the following morning the news of the capture had spread to the farthest limits of the county. A much larger number of people than usual came to town that Saturday—bearded men in straw hats and blue homespun shirts, and butternut trousers of great amplitude of material and vagueness of outline; women in homespun frocks and slat-bonnets, with faces as expressionless as the dreary sandhills which gave them a meager sustenance.

  The murder was almost the sole topic of conversation. A steady stream of curious observers visited the house of mourning, and gazed upon the rugged face of the old veteran, now stiff and cold in death; and more than one eye dropped a tear at the remembrance of the cheery smile, and the joke—sometimes superannuated, generally feeble, but always good-natured—with which the captain had been wont to greet his acquaintances. There was a growing sentiment of anger among these stern men toward the murderer who had thus cut down their friend, and a strong feeling that ordinary justice was too slight a punishment for such a crime.

  Toward noon there was an informal gathering of citizens in Dan Tyson�
�s store.

  “I hear it ’lowed that Square Kyahtah’s too sick ter hol’ co’te this evenin’,” said one, “an’ that the purlim’nary hearin’ ’ll haf ter go over ’tel nex’ week.” A look of disappointment went round the crowd.

  “Hit’s the durndes’, meanes’ murder ever committed in this caounty,” said another, with moody emphasis.

  “I s’pose the nigger ’lowed the Cap’n had some greenbacks,” observed a third speaker.

  “The Cap’n,” said another, with an air of superior information, “has left two bairls of Confedrit money, which he ’spected’d be good some day er nuther.”

  This statement gave rise to a discussion of the speculative value of Confederate money; but in a little while the conversation returned to the murder.

  “Hangin’ air too good fer the murderer,” said one; “he oughter be burnt, stider bein’ hung.”

  There was an impressive pause at this point, during which a jug of moonlight whiskey went the round of the crowd.

  “Well,” said a round-shouldered farmer, who, in spite of his peaceable expression and faded gray eye, was known to have been one of the most daring followers of a rebel guerrilla chieftain, “what air yer gwine ter do about it? Ef you fellers air gwine ter set down an’ let a wuthless nigger kill the bes’ white man in Branson, an’ not say nuthin’ ner do nuthin’, I’ll move outen the caounty.”

  This speech gave tone and direction to the rest of the conversation. Whether the fear of losing the round-shouldered farmer operated to bring about the result or not is immaterial to this narrative; but, at all events, the crowd decided to lynch the negro. They agreed that this was the least that could be done to avenge the death of their murdered friend, and that it was a becoming way in which to honor his memory. They had some vague notions of the majesty of the law and the rights of the citizen, but in the passion of the moment these sunk into oblivion; a white man had been killed by a negro.

  “The Cap’n was an ole sodger,” said one of his friends solemnly. “He’ll sleep better when he knows that a co’te-martial has be’n hilt an’ jestice done.”

  By agreement the lynchers were to meet at Tyson’s store at five o’clock in the afternoon, and proceed thence to the jail, which was situated down the Lumberton Dirt Road (as the old turnpike antedating the plank-road was called), about half a mile south of the court-house. When the preliminaries of the lynching had been arranged, and a committee appointed to manage the affair, the crowd dispersed, some to go to their dinners, and some to secure recruits for the lynching party.

  It was twenty minutes to five o’clock, when an excited negro, panting and perspiring, rushed up to the back door of Sheriff Campbell’s dwelling, which stood at a little distance from the jail and somewhat farther than the latter building from the court-house. A turbaned colored woman came to the door in response to the negro’s knock.

  “Hoddy, Sis’ Nance.”

  “Hoddy, Brer Sam.”

  “Is de shurff in?” inquired the negro.

  “Yas, Brer Sam, he’s eatin’ his dinner,” was the answer.

  “Will yer ax ’im ter step ter de do’ a minute, Sis’ Nance?”

  The woman went into the dining-room, and a moment later the sheriff came to the door. He was a tall, muscular man, of a ruddier complexion than is usual among Southerners. A pair of keen, deep-set gray eyes looked out from under bushy eyebrows, and about his mouth was a masterful expression, which a full beard, once sandy in color, but now profusely sprinkled with gray, could not entirely conceal. The day was hot; the sheriff had discarded his coat and vest, and had his white shirt open at the throat.

  “What do you want, Sam?” he inquired of the negro, who stood hat in hand, wiping the moisture from his face with a ragged shirt-sleeve.

  “Shurff, dey gwine ter hang de pris’ner w’at’s lock’ up in de jail. Dey’re comin’ dis a-way now. I wuz layin’ down on a sack er corn down at de sto’, behine a pile er flour-bairls, w’en I hearn Doc’ Cain en Kunnel Wright talkin’ erbout it. I slip’ outen de back do’, en run here as fas’ as I could. I hearn you say down ter de sto’ once’t dat you wouldn’t let nobody take a pris’ner ’way fum you widout walkin’ over yo’ dead body, en I thought I’d let you know ’fo’ dey come, so yer could pertec’ de pris’ner.”

  The sheriff listened calmly, but his face grew firmer, and a determined gleam lit up his gray eyes. His frame grew more erect, and he unconsciously assumed the attitude of a soldier who momentarily expects to meet the enemy face to face.

  “Much obliged, Sam,” he answered. “I’ll protect the prisoner. Who’s coming?”

  “I dunno who-all is comin’,” replied the negro. “Dere’s Mistah McSwayne, en Doc’ Cain, en Maje’ McDonal’, en Kunnel Wright, en a heap er yuthers. I wuz so skeered I done furgot mo’ d’n half un em. I spec’ dey mus’ be mos’ here by dis time, so I’ll git outen de way, fer I don’ want nobody fer ter think I wuz mix’ up in dis business.” The negro glanced nervously down the road toward the town, and made a movement as if to go away.

  “Won’t you have some dinner first?” asked the sheriff.

  The negro looked longingly in at the open door, and sniffed the appetizing odor of boiled pork and collards.

  “I ain’t got no time fer ter tarry, Shurff,” he said, “but Sis’ Nance mought gin me sump’n I could kyar in my han’ en eat on de way. “

  A moment later Nancy brought him a huge sandwich of split cornpone, with a thick slice of fat bacon inserted between the halves, and a couple of baked yams. The negro hastily replaced his ragged hat on his head, dropped the yams in the pocket of his capacious trousers, and, taking the sandwich in his hand, hurried across the road and disappeared in the woods beyond.

  The sheriff reentered the house, and put on his coat and hat. He then took down a double-barreled shotgun and loaded it with buckshot. Filling the chambers of a revolver with fresh cartridges, he slipped it into the pocket of the sack-coat which he wore.

  A comely young woman in a calico dress watched these proceedings with anxious surprise.

  “Where are you going, father?” she asked. She had not heard the conversation with the negro.

  “I am goin’ over to the jail,” responded the sheriff. “There’s a mob comin’ this way to lynch the nigger we’ve got locked up. But they won’t do it,” he added, with emphasis.

  “Oh, father! don’t go!” pleaded the girl, clinging to his arm; “they’ll shoot you if you don’t give him up.”

  “You never mind me, Polly,” said her father reassuringly, as he gently unclasped her hands from his arm. “I’ll take care of myself and the prisoner, too. There ain’t a man in Branson County that would shoot me. Besides, I have faced fire too often to be scared away from my duty. You keep close in the house,” he continued, “and if any one disturbs you just use the old horse-pistol in the top bureau drawer. It’s a little old-fashioned, but it did good work a few years ago.”

  The young girl shuddered at this sanguinary allusion, but made no further objection to her father’s departure.

  The sheriff of Branson was a man far above the average of the community in wealth, education, and social position. His had been one of the few families in the county that before the war had owned large estates and numerous slaves. He had graduated at the State University at Chapel Hill, and had kept up some acquaintance with current literature and advanced thought. He had traveled some in his youth, and was looked up to in the county as an authority on all subjects connected with the outer world. At first an ardent supporter of the Union, he had opposed the secession movement in his native state as long as opposition availed to stem the tide of public opinion. Yielding at last to the force of circumstances, he had entered the Confederate service rather late in the war, and served with distinction through several campaigns, rising in time to the rank of colonel. After the war he had taken the oath of allegiance, and had been chosen by the people as the most available candidate for the office of sheriff, to which he had bee
n elected without opposition. He had filled the office for several terms, and was universally popular with his constituents.

  Colonel or Sheriff Campbell, as he was indifferently called, as the military or civil title happened to be most important in the opinion of the person addressing him, had a high sense of the responsibility attaching to his office. He had sworn to do his duty faithfully, and he knew what his duty was as sheriff, perhaps more clearly than he had apprehended it in other passages of his life. It was, therefore, with no uncertainty in regard to his course that he prepared his weapons and went over to the jail. He had no fears for Polly’s safety.